Organization Development for Social Change: An Integrated Approach to Community Transformation

Introduction

Do you sometimes stay up at night wondering if your organization is actually making a difference? How often do you see groups moving from one organizing campaign to the next without stopping to think about the bigger picture? Are you sure of what we as progressives are ultimately fighting for? When is the last time you heard about another social justice organization that does vital work falling into the throes of staff tensions and nearly shutting down? How many people do you know who decided to leave their social justice work to spend more time with their families, go back to school, or find a less stressful job that would actually pay the bills?

As people working for social change, we currently face serious dilemmas about our organizational ability to grow, change, and stick around long enough to nurture broad social movements. As vehicles for social change, nonprofits are an important building block in a broad-based movement aiming to reinvigorate democracy and achieve real racial and economic justice. Nonprofit leaders committed to movement-building face this central question: How can our organizations both be bold enough to alter the fundamental structural relationships in society, and wise enough to act according to principles of organizational sustainability and community transformation?

The elements of collective action, political analysis, organizational structure, and individual reflection are critically important to building a social movement that on one hand embodies sustainable practices, and on the other is politically shrewd and powerful enough to contend with oppressive forces. At the same time, each element presents a different approach to change that surfaces contentious questions about the value of internal work (both personal and organizational), the centrality of power-based analysis, and the primacy of action above all else. Differences of opinion in each of these areas crystallize sharp tensions and can impede even the most concerted efforts to work together.

This article explores organizational and movement-building tensions, like the ones above, in order to unearth potential places of unity and develop a more holistic framework for change. This framework contains four approaches to transformation that we believe are vital components to social change, and that are frequently at odds with each other within organizations. They are: Community Organizing (CO), Power Analysis (PA), Organization Development (OD), and Spirit/Sustainable Practice (SP)

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Investigate, expose and support

Reporters Without Borders:

defends
journalists and media assistants imprisoned or persecuted for doing
their job and exposes the mistreatment and torture of them in many
countries.

fights against censorship and laws that undermine press freedom.

gives financial aid
each year to 100 or so journalists or media outlets in difficulty (to
pay for lawyers, medical care and equipment) as well to the families of
imprisoned journalists.

works to improve the safety of journalists, especially those reporting in war zones.

Before taking action, Reporters Without
Borders researchers, who each handle a region (Africa, the Americas,
Asia/Pacific, Europe and the former Soviet bloc, Middle East/ North
Africa) or a topic such as the Internet, compile reports of press
freedom violations. After checking the information, the researchers and
the organisations’ correspondents send protest letters to the
authorities to put pressure on governments which do not respect the
right to inform and to be informed, and send releases to the media to
drum up support for the journalists under attack.

Sometimes gathering information is not
enough. A Reporters Without Borders fact-finding mission is then sent
to investigate on the spot the working conditions of journalists, as
well as cases of imprisoned or murdered journalists, and also to meet
with the authorities in the country concerned.

Publicity campaigns conducted with the
help of public relations firms aim to inform people and try to give
countries which do not respect this basic right a bad name in the eyes
of international institutions, the media and governments that have ties
with them.

Reporters Without Borders is funded by
the sale of its twice-annual albums of photographs as well as
calendars, by auctions, small and large donations, member dues, public
grants and partnerships with private firms.

An international organisation

Reporters Without Borders is present in all five continents through
its national branches (in Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany,
Italy, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland), its offices in Bangkok, London,
New York, Tokyo and Washington, and the more than 120 correspondents it
has in other countries. The organisation also works closely with local
and regional press freedom groups that are members of the Reporters
Without Borders Network, in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Burma,
Colombia, Democratic Congo, Eritrea, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Peru,
Romania, Russia, Somalia, the United States and Tunisia.

Reporters Without Borders is registered in France as a non-profit organisation and has consultant status at the United Nations.

In 2005, the organisation won the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

A constantly-updated website

All the organisation’s press releases and publications are available
online in five languages (Arabic, English, French, Spanish and Persian)
at its website www.rsf.org which keeps a daily-updated list of
journalists killed or imprisoned around the world. It also contains
detailed reports on special cases and invites the public to sign online
petitions for the release of jailed journalists.

This is a directory
of media owned and operated primarily by, for and about women.
We do not include men's "women's magazines" (magazines
directed at women), even if they have a female staff. We do include
many academic periodicals which are published by institutions,
but only those where women determine content and make up the majority
of the staff. If a woman's media feels it fits our definition,
we usually include them.

In the 1970's and '80's, the Women's
Institute for Freedom of the Press published 15 annual editions
of the Directory of Women's Media. The National Council
for Research on Women, in New York, published two more editions
in the early 1990's. Now, once again, WIFP is publishing of the
directory of periodicals, publishers, media organizations, and
other media categories. It is available here on the WIFP website
with no access charge. Since we are continually updating the Directory,
please send us any new entries or changes so we can immediately
include them. We want the Directory to be as accurate and
as inclusive as possible particularly when we produce our print
version of this Directory of Women's Media available.

Women's media associations have been founded around the world to
support women journalists. Their focus and activities vary depending on
the needs and desires of members. Some associations lobby media owners
for changes in how women are portrayed in the media. Others arrange
conferences on issues related to women in journalism. Many organize
roundtable discussions on women in the media.

If
you are interested in starting a women's media association, these tips from members of existing associations can help you get
started.

NEW YORK—The Open Society Institute today launched a fellowship program
to enable outstanding individuals from around the world to pursue projects that
will inspire meaningful debate and shape public policy.

The Open Society Fellowship will award $2 million in 2008 to scholars, journalists,
activists and others working on national security; citizenship, membership and
marginalization; authoritarianism; and new strategies and tools for advocacy.

“The Open Society Fellows will be idea entrepreneurs,” said George
Soros, founder and chairman of OSI. “The fellowship will generate new
thinking to tackle some of the most pressing questions of our day.”

Fellows’ projects may include books, articles, documentary films,
online media, and efforts to seed new campaigns and organizations. OSI
seeks fellows who will engage with its staff and inform its thinking.

OSI will provide fellows with competitive stipends and communications assistance,
and will integrate them into its networks of partners and grantees. Most fellowships
will be awarded for one year.

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. For more information, please
see the Open Society
Fellowship guidelines.

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The idea of the protests against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, known as the FARC, was born less than a month ago on the
social networking Web site Facebook, and more than 100,000 people in
165 cities around the world confirmed their participation.

A
New Weave of Power, People & Politics:

The
Action Guide for Advocacy and Citizen Participation

by
Lisa VeneKlasen with Valerie Miller

A New Weave of Power,
People & Politics provides
a well-tested approach for building people’s participation and
collective power that goes beyond influencing policy and politics to
transforming public decision-making altogether. Based on 25 years of
participatory research, community development, neighborhood organizing,
legal rights education, and large-scale campaign advocacy experiences
worldwide, A New Weave combines concrete and practical action
“steps” with a sound theoretical foundation to help users understand
the process of people-centered politics from  planning to action.
Published in 2002 and reprinted in 2007, the guide is unique in its
emphasis on power and constituency-building discussed through the lens
of gender/race/class and based on the concrete experiences of social
change in dozens of countries worldwide.

Read reviews of the book in Popular Education News, by John Ruthrauff, for InterAction, and other praise.

Translations of A New Weave are available in Spanish, Russian, Bahasa Indonesia, and (soon) French. (more)

“The traditional approach to change is to look for the problem, do a diagnosis, and find a solution. The primary focus is on what is wrong or broken; since we look for problems, we find them. By paying attention to problems, we emphasize and amplify them. …Appreciative Inquiry suggests that we look for what works in an organization. The tangible result of the inquiry process is a series of statements that describe where the organization wants to be, based on the high moments of where they have been. Because the statements are grounded in real experience and history, people know how to repeat their success.”

Hammond, Sue. The Thin Book of Appreciative Inquiry. Thin Book Publishing Company, 1998, pages 6-7.

“Appreciative Inquiry focuses us on the positive aspects of our lives and leverages them to correct the negative. It’s the opposite of ‘problem-solving.”

White, T.H. Working in Interesting Times: Employee morale and business success in the information age. Vital Speeches of the Day, May 15, 1996, Vol XLII, No. 15.

“Appreciative Inquiry [is] a theory and practice for approaching change from a holistic framework. Based on the belief that human systems are made and imagined by those who live and work within them, AI leads systems to move toward the generative and creative images that reside in their most positive core – their values, visions, achievements, and best practices.” “AI is both a world view and a practical process. In theory, AI is a perspective, a set of principles and beliefs about how human systems function, a departure from the past metaphor of human systems as machines. Appreciative Inquiry has an attendant set of core processes, practices, and even ‘models’ that have emerged. In practice, AI can be used to co-create the transformative processes and practices appropriate to the culture of a particular organization.” “Grounded in the theory of ‘social constructionism,’ AI recognizes that human systems are constructions of the imagination and are, therefore, capable of change at the speed of imagination. Once organization members shift their perspective, they can begin to invent their most desired future.”